"Kansan1225" - in real
life, Nick Kaffes - is one of the internet's more bizarre
characters (which should say something in and of itself). His pseudonym, he has
written, reflects his birth date and birth state. Although his anti-Masonic
rhetoric has been considerably muted due to his constantly escalating obsession with German super-model Heidi Klum, he
nevertheless continues to assert that Masons are somehow tied in with aliens and
exercise control over world events.In Nick's case, his entire life seems to revolve around someone
he 'discovered' through his bizarre assertions about Masonic control of the
universe.

and in more recent messages, he's referred to himself as "the Prophet
Emperor Nicholas". Folks, these are NOT just the ramblings of a
disaffected teen-ager: Kansan has bragged about having a doctorate degree from a
legitimate college and the man is over 50 years old, born in 1952! His
self-designated titles may be some indication as to his grasp on reality - although those who
see just a couple of posts can easily dismiss him as a harmless kook. Unsettlingly, his obsessive fixation
with Heidi goes well beyond fanatical and even the casual reader of his material
quickly realizes the depth of his obsession. Over the years we've learned of
people who became so fixated on a single famous personality that they
convince themselves there's a reciprocal relationship: those who stalked Jody
Foster, David Letterman, and John Lennon provide classic examples of the
personality type!

The initial appearance of 'Kansan1225' on the
alt.freemasonry usenet newsgroup (and apparently his first usenet posting)
was on February 6, 1999 wherein he began his anti-Masonic tirade. His 'shtick'
has changed marginally since then and is now overshadowed by his obsession with
Heidi. That
initial post revealed a totally bizarre conspiracy-filled world-view with contrived connections in a
'shoot the arrow/draw the target' tactic the likes of which has rarely been
duplicated. It also showed the extent of his prognostication abilities when he
spoke of the then problems relating to US President William Clinton:

... At the present time, the Impeachment Trial, a
re-enactment of the Death and Resurrection of Hiram Abiff, is scheduled to be
completed on Friday, February 12, the birthday of the ritually murdered
Abraham Lincoln. The Trial will conclude with the Raising (Acquital) of
Brother Bill from the Floor of the Senate."

Masonicinfo Note: You actually did
get something partially right. The impeachment concluded that day - as was
widely predicted - although there was NO "acquital" (or acquittal): the Senate
simply voted down the articles of impeachment. However, the sentence in your
subsequent paragraph seems to have put you in the category of all those
other 'seers' of the future when you wrote:

"Therefore, expect
Brother Bill to continue in a zombie-like state (similar to that of Masonic
Brother King Hussein), until some untoward development removes him permanently
from the Presidency, or even from the world of the living. Expect this removal
to take place before the seventh month of 1999...."

So much for Nick's ability to see the future. These, though, were minor
compared to his anti-Masonic diatribes - in profusion. He began a
veritable flood of postings that continually
accused Freemasonry of Satanism and of manipulating world events. His knowledge
of dates and his ability to interconnect unrelated dates and facts in an extraordinary
flimflam fashion caused most readers to immediately marginalize his claims. He began writing essays which
were posted to a website that he claimed wasn't his (it still exists today - click
here, understanding that it's a free Tripod site with MANY pop-up windows)
and shows much of the venom and anti-Semitism we personally felt was profoundly disturbing.

Nick obviously wanted to reach a wide audience with his conspiracy theories
(although why 'now' is still, five years later, unclear). He would post single, identical messages to multiple newsgroups,
most related
to conspiracy (including a group for fans of Robert Anton Wilson, one of the
authors of conspiracy parody, "The Illuminatus! Trilogy"). He had
ostensibly written a book. He also published a newsletter which he would occasionally
flaunt and that he'd
convinced one single university library to subscribe to. (When that library was
contacted about their subscription, they apparently READ it and
Nick shortly thereafter seemed to lose his sole customer and
discontinued his publishing ventures....)

It took Nick almost a year from that first Kansan1225 post to 'finding' the person he
claimed was his "spiritual daughter". On January 17, 2000, he posted about the woman who is now his
obsession. Why Heidi Klum, you ask? In Nick's
mind, every event that had ever occurred in the history of mankind (and perhaps some outside of it)
was somehow manipulated by what he refers to as "Clandestine Luciferian Masons" or CLuMs for
short. It only took a year for him to figure out that Heidi KLUM's name fit
nicely into his conspiracy theories (much better than Claudia Schiffer and Polly Klass,
with whom he had brief imaginary flirtations, for example) and
that he could use her popularity and appeal to garner interest in his rants.
Her involvement was, he declared, a "spiritual and temporal conspiracy".
For Nick, it was a short trip through the paranoia in his weird usenet messages
to proclaiming his love for Heidi by writing long messages to her website and devouring every
piece of material (and photograph) about her. He definitively proclaimed
that she was being used as a 'tool' of supernatural forces ruling the universe
and that "the Entities" (which include space aliens) had a master plan
for both Heidi and himself.

Nick's anti-Masonic tactics were reasonably unique. Using, primarily, coincidence of dates
(but occasionally tossing in things like supposedly similar patterns on flags, neckwear, or
whatever), he capitalized on his extraordinary ability to remember dates and historical minutiae
to form an imagined connection from any event to any other event - throughout the
history of the world and especially in modern times. Among his more bizarre claims
was
that all of the world's countries are in league with each other, with their leaders
secretly manipulating world events - and that they're all somehow secretly connected with
Freemasonry. His assertions were so weird as to be dismissed out of hand but the
casual reader examining a
single internet Usenet posting both then and now often feels compelled to respond, if
only because they don't fully understand the enormous fallacy which feeds the
concept of Nick's asserted belief system.

One
Mason observed that if a person took the listing from the book "10,000 Famous
Freemasons" it would result in - on average - some thirty Masons being tied to
an event for each day
of the year. And, ignoring obvious fact, all of the world's leaders (past and present) are
not tied to
Freemasonry despite Nick's assertions to the contrary. More astute observers will note
that Kansan1225, after his early spectacular failures, rarely makes predictions but simply puts together his conception of
connections between events, all controlled by these imaginary CLuMs - and that to date,
with but one or two exceptions, each of his predictions has been wrong.

At one point, Mr. Kaffes resorted to virulent anti-Semitic attacks and attempts to sell
his books/newsletter. He posted the following on the alt.freemasonry newsgroup:

"Recently the Shabbes Goy Ed King tried to side step my characterization
of him as a boot-licking slave of his satanic Zionist masters.

Having lived in the New York/New Jersey area for many years, I am very
familiar with the behavioral characteristics of Jews, satanic Zionists, Talmudists, the backward Hassidim, etc. Ed King does not behave like any
kind of Jew in my experience.

He does, however, behave like a sycophantic slave, licking the Talmudic
excrement off the boots of his satanic Zionist masters.

What do other people think? How would you vote? Ed King: Shabbes Goy or Jew?"

He later posted the following as well:

"Hey, Ed King, what are you doing posting here
on a Saturday morning?

You should be at a Synagogue cleaning out
toilets."

With the death of conspiracy theorist Jim
Keith, Nick attempted to 'tie his star' to another of those
who achieved notoriety through weirdness. In September, 1999, he claimed to
have received the following message from Mr. Keith:

Read your write-up of the Polly Klass masonic
connections in alt.conspiracy and found it very interesting. I'm working on
the next volume in the Secret and Suppressed book series, Secret and
Suppressed II, and I would be interested in seeing submissions of your writing
for possible publication. Looking forward to hearing from you.

As time passed, however, Nick's prodigious talent for memorizing
irrelevant trivia seems to have caused him to forget the actual contents of that
message because in May, 2001
he wrote:

Many people have been impressed by my writings.
One of them was the well-known conspiracy writer Jim Keith. Back in August
1999 he asked me to publish some of my articles in his upcoming book.

In less than two weeks he was dead under suspicious
circumstances.

Mr. Keith's request for writing samples "...for possible publication." turned into
"...asked me to publish...." and it's delicious to add a hint that his
death might have some connection to his having contacted Nick. Curious, isn't it?

Many people believe that Nick is posting only to the newsgroup
that they're reading - and those to which he posts run the gamut from the bizarre to the ridiculous.
In reality, however, he daily screens multiple sources for information about Ms. Klum's most personal
activities and then posts messages to multiple newsgroups, one at a time. When
a response is received on any group, it's posted individually to a dozen others. Because of this
technique, one is tempted to wonder if some of these 'responses' he receives
are simply creations of Nick's
very bizarre mind.

In July of 2002, Mr. Kaffes shocked alt.freemasonry (and the
several other newsgroups to which he posts) by posting a single message of
apology for his anti-Semitic
behavior. We're still unsure as to his motivation for this and have added the
fact as a footnote rather than a headline. Time
will tell whether this apology represents a true change in his behavior or whether it's
a ruse for some more egregious activity. We hope that Nick has truly repented of
his former positions and encourage him in modifying his behavior. When
confronted with his messages to this site's author, he responded with a
half-hearted comment that he had already posted an apology for his anti-Semitic
behavior and dismissed its egregiousness as being a byproduct of his experiences
during a period in which he lived in the Near East, a hotbed for such things.

As of December, 2003, Mr. Kaffes seems FAR more obsessed with
Heidi minutiae than before. He had previously claimed that his wife and two
daughters had supported him in his fantasies but later wrote that he's not
allowed to speak about Heidi. (Small wonder, in our opinion....!). He
nevertheless regularly spoke of "the Entities" (which he defined as
God, the angels, and extraterrestrial beings including the Masons - in a broad
expansion of the Hoagland theories!)
and his readers fail to realize that the bizarre conspiracy theories continued
unabated.

Nick
- who previously claimed that Heidi was his "spiritual daughter" and
the sister to his own daughters wrote such bizarre things as:

"Such is the situation today: Heidi's official "lover", Flavio
Briatore, doubts the paternity of Heidi's baby and
demands a DNA test.
Whereas, I, the avatar of Pope Sylvester,
have no doubt that I am the baby's father
and look forward to his or her birth."

He also wrote that he and Heidi were married at his Church in
Houston during Easter weekend. Likely Ms. Klum's whereabouts that particular
time are unknown - which Nick knows - and he can thus fan the flames of his
fantasies still further. We'll not comment further on the
daughter/marriage-father matter; discerning readers
can readily see the depths of delusion and depravity that Nick has entered.

He further bragged about going to a neurologist
relating to his 'obsessions' at the request of his wife. After a single visit,
he provided sketchy information, obfuscated in the normal Kansan style. There
followed several weeks of 'stories' about his relationship with the physician
and then, suddenly, Nick fell silent and has not been heard
from anywhere online since.

Will he reappear at some
point with more fantasies? Who knows....

Updated: 26 April 2004
Updated: 23 January 2005

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